Circle of Impact Resources

Circle of Impact Leadership GuidesThese conversational guides are tools for helping leaders and their teams think and communicate clearly about their work and the challenges of change in the 21st. Century.

Life-Work Transitions MaterialsChange is normal, disruptive and a mark of the transitional nature of life and work. These materials are designed to help bring clarity and direction to people and organizations in the midst of transition.

Lewis & Clark for the 21st Century blogA decade and a half ago, I became deeply interested in the Lewis & Clark Expedition (1803-1806). I saw in this story leadership lessons that I wanted to share with people, so that they too would travel the trail, and discover this great American story.

September 09, 2009

You are in control of you - Admiral James Stockdale on surviving in stressful situations

This week's Weekly Leader column - You are in charge of you - looks at the stress that comes from losing one's job in the context of the story of James Stockdale, the highest ranking US POW imprisoned during the Vietnam War.

Admiral, how did you survive psychologically? The other men you mentioned
perished under the same circumstances.

James Stockdale: I don't know. I didn't feel like I had more vitality than
the next one. I had things to do. I was alone a lot, and I found ways to talk to
myself and to bolster my own morale. I was getting occasional letters from my
wife Sybil. And she would from me. She probably wrote 50 and I got six, and I
probably wrote 20 and she got two or something like that.

After I came out of Alcatraz, we all came back to the regular prison. They
tried to get me to go downtown. They tried everything. They would give me the
ropes three times a week. One of my original breakthroughs was self
disfiguration. I was given a lot of times in the ropes in room 18, which is the
main torture chamber of Hoa Lo prison. It also serves as kind of a ceremonial
chamber when no prisoners are in there. In that, the only room in the building,
a great big building with plate glass windows, and they had big heavy quilts
that they drew across it. I was in there and they were about at their wits end.
Two officers were working me over. Pi Ga, my torture guard, was always there to
take me wherever they wanted. It was about mid-afternoon and they said, "Okay,
you've done okay, today. Now you want to get washed up." I knew what that meant.
That meant we were going downtown that night.

On any day you could probably find a couple of international discussion
groups somewhere in town and on some days probably five of them. And they would
cajole Americans into going downtown. It's not so much the location, it's some
place in Hanoi where you're going to talk about politics and nothing else. I
never went downtown. In Heartbreak Hotel a lot of prisoners only had access to
this shower head that was in a regular cell with two cement seats or beds. But
this was dedicated to showers, they didn't have anything else to do. So you
walked in and you went between these beds and then you saw the spigot and pretty
soon the water started coming out and you were to take your clothes off and he
handed you the soap and the razor and slammed the door because he had other
errands to do.

As soon as I could I got my head wet and lathered up, I started with that
safety razor, just cutting a track down the top of my head that I judged would
make it impractical for them to take me downtown. He came back to the peephole
and I ducked down, just showing him my behind, which is all he could see because
I was stooped over, and then back up and again. I didn't realize that I was
bleeding so bad. And then he came in and grabbed me, grabbed my arm and he knew
he was in trouble, too. There was blood running down my shoulders and there were
secretaries in the courtyard that we went by and they were looking. That was the
headquarters prison of the whole country of North Vietnam so they had offices
and they had everything you can expect. He took me back into this room and boy,
those two officers, they said, "How dare you? How dare you?" I just got down in
the position for the ropes and he said, "You have no right to take the ropes." I
knew I was getting him screwed up. Finally they said, "I got it. We'll get a hat
and we'll take you down to the press conference with a hat on." So as soon as
they locked the door, I looked around for something else to do damage to myself
with, and I saw the old toilet can that had been there for years, and I knew
every chunk of it, but that was infection and one thing -- and then I said,
"Well, what's wrong with this mahogany stool?" and bang, bang, bang, bang, and
the secretaries across the hall wondered what the noise was and they started
shaking the door. I didn't -- couldn't see them. But by the time they got back
my eyes were closed and there was no question about it. They couldn't do
anything and said, "What do you want me to tell the commissar?" I said, "You
tell the commissar the CAG decided not to go downtown tonight." And they went
out and then they gave me -- you know, then through that -- other times I'd used
other devices.

They told me, "We think they're going to put you in the mint pretty soon."
And that was kind of the end of the line. There was an old privy outside, and we
had this signal system. You could take a vertical wire -- the outsider wouldn't
even realize it was up there -- and if you moved it this way, that meant there
was an old bottle under that sink. If you had a message for Stockdale he would
know that he had a message in the bottle. If it looked like it was booby trapped
you'd just push it back. There was even a position for if it was okay.

So I was down there and I was exchanging notes and getting things done and
then I had kind of got a nice note from a guy and I -- but we were -- what we
were using for paper and pen was tough toweling that was sort -- it was the idea
of toilet paper and rat manure. You'd lick it and you could print right on it
and get another piece. And so a voice said -- and I was careless on this. He
sneaked up under the door, and it was kind of a complicated thing but he said,
"What are you doing?" I said, "I'm reading these letters my wife sent me," which
was authorized. They would leave letters. And he said, "No, your hand was
moving." Uh-oh, I knew it. Well, then he ran and he got the turnkey and they
came in and they got me out and they told me to put my hands up -- this is the
typical prison shake down position.

In the meantime I had had sense enough to put it in the crotch of my pants. I
did that because I concluded -- and I think I'm right -- that there's a great
connection between farm boys in Illinois and farm boys in rural Vietnam. They
have a sense of propriety against intruding in other people's private parts. As
far as I know that's true. I don't know, because I didn't have it up there well
enough. As I was walking back it rolled out of my pant leg and then they had it.

There was something in the air. I don't want to make this too mysterious,
but it was kind of a dark and dreary night. As they walked me over to the other
side of the camp and put me in a little privy-like place I'd never seen before
that's just full of cobwebs -- it would only accommodate one man -- and I think
they were just doing something to get me out of that camp so that I knew I'd go
in room 18 the next morning. And the man came in with leg irons and he put them
on me and they were squeeze irons, built to put pressure points on your legs so
you couldn't sleep that night. And I looked down there and he was, so help me,
weeping, and not out of sympathy for me I'm sure, but I marked that down in my
book. And then the next morning, when I was taken over to the other place to get
the torture started for that day there was a couple of other people weeping. And
I said, "Old Ho Chi Minh probably died last night."

I'd been unsuccessfully accosted to give them information. I could hold it
back from the particular crowd that was working with me that day, they were kind
of halfway friendly people. Something was wrong. The whole country was going
bananas. Later that afternoon, I was just lying down on my roll, assuming that
the day was over, and this guy named Bug, who was a snotty officer, he said,
"Get on your feet! Tomorrow is the day we bring you down." That meant I would
succumb. And he said, "This country is in mourning. There will be dirge music in
the streets tonight. Ho Chi Minh died last night and we're in mourning." Well,
I'd anticipated that. And then they didn't let me lie down. They put me in a
chair. They said, "Put him in a chair with ropes on his arms and traveling irons
for his feet." Traveling irons were what you got so you could go to the bathroom
in the night. I was depressed. I said to myself, "God, maybe I'm the problem
here instead of the solution. I had said, "Here's my orders. Remember:
B-A-C-U-S: BACUS." It could be tapped out. "B" means do not bow in public. "A,"
stay off the air, never talk into a tape recorder or a microphone. "C," don't
kiss them good-bye when we go home. "U-S" might be seen as United States but
what it really means is "Unity over Self." That was the first order. I put out
dozens of them but that was the instruction. I said, "Maybe I'm the problem,
because there had been people who were killed in the ropes." And then I just
said, "I do know one thing. I've got to change the status quo because I'm going
to be dealing with a different country tomorrow than I was yesterday. And who
knows what's going to happen? They may go bonkers."

And so I said, "I've got to change the status quo,"
and with that I got off from my traveling irons and went over and shut off the
light, pulled back these blankets, and exposing the plate glass window, using
the palm of my hand, which was relatively free -- I had enough freedom there, to
get the long shards, pull the curtains back, turn on the light, get back in my
chair and sit down and just start going like this. And, first of all, I started
getting blue blood and I said, "Where is the blue blood coming from? We've got
to get some red blood." And so I said, "I don't..." I said to myself, "Is this
right? I don't know but I know I've got to..." my hands -- I had run out of
ideas and I had to explore the future. You wouldn't think I had a future if you
saw me. I passed out in a pool of blood.

Did you want to die, Admiral?

James Stockdale: No, I don't think so. I just knew I had to do something, and
I had kind of a hunch that there might be some opening here. I went unconscious.
I had a feeling that ever since I'd started this self-defacement they had a
suicide watch on me. About two in the night somebody screamed "Eow," and I think
that was the suicide watch. I think he looked through a peephole and saw me in
that pool of blood in front of my chair.

I was groggy and I really had to be slapped awake, but the room filled up
with soldiers and the doctor and some officers and a lot of guards. They were
cleaning the room. They were like they were ashamed of it and they were sweeping
the floor and putting fluid on it that smelled like something in a funeral
parlor. The guards took my clothes out and washed them. The officers were nasty,
but they couldn't figure out what to say. Finally -- I don't know the time of
night, maybe 3 or 4 in the morning -- they brought in a cot and then they
brought in a chair and they put a soldier in the chair and he put the rifle
across his knees and they let me lie in the bed with a pillow and I passed out.
"Boy, this has been a day!" I looked up at those walls and they're all covered
with geckos. You see them on all of the walls in Southeast Asia and they're
moving around and they snipe at one another but, God, I looked up there and to
me all the gekkos were bisecting their friends! I knew I was hallucinating. I
almost laughed. The next morning the door squeaks open and I look out and it's the
commissar himself. He sat down and he said, "Stockdale, do you want a cup of
coffee?" I said, "Yes." I don't think I had leg irons on. I went over and sat
down across from him and he said, "What happened last night was a catastrophe."
And he said, "You know I sit with the general's staff. A report will be written.
It may adversely affect me. It might even adversely affect you. I can't say.
But..." he said, "You will not stay here. We will put you back in that little
place where the doctor will attend you until all traces of bandage and scars as
best we can arrange it are gone." Well I was out there from September to almost
Christmas and then I went back. Things had happened. I was completely out of
communication there. I found out two things. One, nobody had ever been in the
ropes since I cut my wrists, and secondly, the commissar had been discharged. So
from then on the life was never the same. It wasn't happy, but I shut down that
torture system and they never wanted it brought up again.

James Stockdale: It's just two paragraphs. They always start out the same.
"For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and
beyond the call of duty." Then it explains what happened, and it says, "The
highest traditions of the Naval Service were upheld."

You truly suffered for your men.James Stockdale: I thought I owed it to them. I was the senior guy there.
That night was not like any other night except some of the thoughts and some of
the mental state. I don't think that was an exception. I guess you can say it's
just dumb luck, but you never know. I gave them a problem like they'd never had
before and they solved it by backing off.

You've spoken a lot about Epictetus and stoicism. What role do you think
your knowledge of that philosophy had in your survival?

James Stockdale: I think it had a lot, but I never mentioned that name or
stoicism, it never left my lips. I'd had experience; sometimes there'll be a man
in good communication with you, and you had some sort of a -- maybe a religious
experience, maybe an inspirational thought -- and you get on the wall and you
start giving that stuff to him, tapping him on the wall. After he sees what
you're up to, his "twos" -- which he does each time you finish a word -- get
less and less enthusiastic.

You don't have to be a military officer to exhibit this sort of resilience under pressure. All you must do is determine within your own mind that "you are in control of you." That you well-being begins with your attitude, not with the conditions of your life.